MARCH 19TH

How many observe Christ's Birth-day! How few, his Precepts! O! 'tis easier to keep Holidays than Commandments.

— Benjamin Franklin,1743

AMERICANREVOLUTION.ORG

CHAPTER XVIII

A HOPELESS SIEGE

While these adventures were befalling the
prisoners within the walls of Quebec, the siege obstinately maintained
by a force too weak to assume the offensive dragged uneventfully
on. Arnold's wound slowly but steadily improved, and before February
was so far advanced he was able to hobble about his room with
the aid of a cane or a crutch. By the end of the month he could
go out-of-doors, and give the encouragement of his actual physical
presence to the little army which his indomitable spirit, exerted
from a bed of suffering and helplessness, had held sternly to
its duty through the weeks of discouragement and grief which
followed the fatal New Year's eve assault. As he passed among
the groups of ragged and shivering soldiers they greeted him
with cheers and congratulations, hailing him by his new title
of General; for news had recently reached the camp that Congress,
in recognition of his services in the march through the wilderness
and the siege of Quebec, had voted him the commission of a brigadier-general.

The good will of the men, which Arnold seems
to have possessed, must have been grateful to his ardent nature,
always sensitive to the affection or enmity of those about him;
but he did not find an equally responsive feeling among some
of his subordinate officers. Captain Handchett and the other
officers of his own detachment with whom he had quarreled were
now prisoners in Quebec, but there were those among the besiegers
who had sympathized with them, or who, as members of Montgomery's
expedition, did not relish the idea of taking orders from the
young Connecticut militia officer whom they considered in no
way their superior, either in experience or native ability. One
of the most troublesome of these was Major Brown, whom the disaffected
companies of Arnold's detachment had pitched upon for their commander
if they could have persuaded Montgomery to form them into an
independent battalion. Major Brown was a western Massachusetts
man, a friend and a comrade-in-arms of that Colonel Easton who,
as the reader will remember, had been kicked by Arnold from his
room at Crown Point, and had, therefore, little reason to be
especially well disposed toward his fiery commanding officer.
The friction between the two men began early, and seems never
to have abated so long as they remained in close and daily association.
As early as the 1st of February we find Arnold thus expressing
himself in a letter to John Hancock, president of the Continental
Congress in Philadelphia:

"Major John Brown, who came down with
General Montgomery with one hundred and sixty men collected from
different regiments, now assumes and insists on the title of
Colonel, which he says the General promised him at Montreal.
Some time before his death, when Major Brown wrote to remind
him of his promise, the General handed me his letter, and told
me at the same time, as Colonel Easton and Major Brown were publicly
impeached with plundering the officers' baggage taken at Sorel,
contrary to articles of capitulation, and to the great scandal
of the American army, he could not in conscience or honor promote
him (Major Brown) until those matters were cleared up. He then
sent for Major Brown and told him his sentiments in the matter
very freely, after which I heard of no further application for
promotion. This transaction, Colonel Campbell, Major Duboys,
and several gentlemen were knowing to. As Colonel Easton and
Major Brown have doubtless a sufficient store of modest merit
to apply to the Continental Congress for promotion, I think it
my duty to say the charge before mentioned is the public topic
of conversation at Montreal, and among the officers of the army
in general, and as such conduct is unbecoming the character of
gentlemen, or soldiers, I believe it would give great disgust
to the army in general if those gentlemen were promoted before
those matters were cleared up. The contents of the enclosed letter
I do not wish to be kept from the gentlemen mentioned therein;
the public interest is my motive for writing. B. ARNoLD."

On the other hand, it is evident that Major
Brown believed that Arnold was not using him fairly, and suspected
that his general's enmity might go so far as to compass the deliberate
sacrifice of his life, through exposure to especial and unnecessary
perils. Some weeks after this letter of Arnold's had been dispatched
to Philadelphia - on the 15th of March, to be precise -Brown
wrote to his wife in Pittsfield:

"Genl. Arnold and I do not agree very
well - I expect another storm soon; suppose I must be a Uriah.
We had an alarm yesterday. The enemy made a sally on our working
party, it was said with five hundred men. Genl. Arnold immediately
ordered me, being on the advanced post, to attack them with my
detachment, which consists of about 200, more than half of which
were sick in hospital. I accordingly marched against the Enemy,
who had retired into the port too soon for me to attack them.
I expect to be punished for Disobedience of orders next; on the
whole we are in an indifferent situation at present. I suppose
all letters are broken open before they reach the Colonies, but
as this goes by a friend it will come safe. I am solicited to
stay another year as Lt. Colonel, but have refused - shall I
consent?"

From this and other letters bearing on the
same question, it is not difficult to guess at the origin of
the dissension among Arnold's officers. It becomes apparent that
one serious grievance which both Handchett and Brown had against
Arnold was what they believed, or pretended to believe, was his
intention to rid himself of them by exposing them to the enemy.
In the letter of Brown just quoted he writes that he "must
be a Uriah." Handchett's reluctance to do the duty assigned
to him has already sufficiently appeared. It is certain, however,
that other officers were ready and eager to do the duty to which
Handchett took exception, while it is plain, from Montgomery's
letter to Schuyler, in which he alludes to this disagreement,
that he sympathized with Arnold and disapproved heartily of the
course pursued by Handchett. In view of these facts, which must
have been well known to Congress, which was also aware of the
unanswered charge of peculation which lay against Easton and
Brown, it must strike the reader as strange that within six weeks
of Arnold's letter to John Hancock, Brown wrote to his wife,
confidentially, that he was repelling offers of promotion. There
were evidently influences at work in Congress which were, to
say the least, openly friendly to those whom Arnold considered
with justice his enemies. What they were cannot be clearly seen,
though it would be strange if so many commissioned and field
officers could not enlist some weighty support in behalf of their
own side of the case. Aaron Burr, too, it may be added, had conceived
a strong dislike for Arnold before the campaign was over. Tact,
apparently, was not one of the new general's virtues.

May we not find in these controversies the
reason why Arnold thought it necessary to lead in person the
assaulting column at Sault au Matelot? Can we not see already
the origin of that coalition of enemies which is said to have
been responsible for the injustice and ingratitude with which
Arnold in after years claimed to have been treated, and which
helped to poison his spirit till it sickened, through treason,
and died within him? Some day, let us hope, the evidence will
be found whereby the scales of historical justice may weigh out
and establish forever the truth as between Arnold and these early
and inveterate enemies.

Harassed by jealousies among his subordinates
and uneasy at the weakness of his force, Arnold nevertheless
seems never to have considered for a moment the abandonment of
the enterprise. Indeed we find him writing hopefully to Washington
in February: "The repeated successes of our raw, undisciplined
troops over the flower of the British army, the many unexpected
and remarkable occurrences in our favor, are plain proofs of
the overruling hand of Providence, and justly demand our warmest
gratitude to Heaven, which I make no doubt will crown our virtuous
efforts with success."

But his letters to Congress constantly appealed
for reinforcements sufficient to put his army on something like
an equality with the force it was besieging, and begged no less
persistently that some general of greater experience and abilities
than he could pretend to should be sent to assume command before
Quebec. The difficulties and embarrassment of his position had
begun to daunt even his sanguine spirit.

The physical condition of the patriot soldiers
was increasingly bad. Smallpox still ravaged the camp, and the
field hospital between Sillery and Wolfe's Cove was always full
of its victims. At one time no less than fifty - nearly 10 per
cent of the whole force - were sick with the malady. The discovery
of vaccination had not been made at this time, and inoculation
was forbidden in the army, but so great was the dread of the
loathsome disease that many inoculated themselves, secretly,
by pricking in the poisonous matter under their finger-nails.
Some reckless and desperate men did this in order to escape in
the hospital the severe duty which was exacted from them in camp.

The suffering of the troops - or "Congreganists,"
as the French-Canadians now called them - from hunger was hardly
less than that of the prisoners within the city. At Three Rivers
they begged for food from door to door, and the sight of their
misery won succor even from the loyalists. In spite of their
temptations, pillage or riot was promptly checked by the officers,
and it is doubtful if a hostile army ever restrained its passions
on foreign soil more successfully.

Though they could have had little to fear
from an enemy so weak in numbers and in the physical strength
of its units, the garrison did not a whit relax their vigilance;
fireballs were lighted at one o'clock and kept burning on the
angles of the bastions till three o'clock in the morning, and
were often thrown out by mortars. Lanterns suspended from long
poles were extended over the ditch, and lighted it so well that
even a dog might have been seen at the bottom of it. By the 9th
of March they had one hundred and fourteen guns mounted, not
counting any cannon less than six- pounders, nor mortars, nor
cohorns. Twice they sallied in force, as the Americans thought,
to capture the cannon near the General Hospital; in reality to
enable the people to gather firewood in their rear. They retired
as the Americans boldly advanced to meet them. The British had
one real cause of anxiety - should the winter continue so severe,
the River St. Lawrence might freeze from shore to shore. To guard
even against this, they replaced some of the guns on the shipping
in the cul-de-sac, mounted guns on the wharves, cut a trench
to clear water at Prés de Ville, and destroyed the houses
on both sides of Sault an Matelot street, lest they might again
furnish cover for the enemy. It might at least have flattered
the vanity of Arnold and his half-starved and shivering battalions
that Carleton showed such cautious respect for them, even in
the time of their greatest feebleness and discouragement.

Early in March the reinforcements which Congress
had despatched began to arrive in camp, a regiment of three hundred
and forty men from Pennsylvania being the first. These men wore
the uniforms which Congress had prescribed - brown with buff
facings, with mittens, knapsacks, and haversacks of Russian duck;
their stockings were protected by leggings, and they carried
firelocks, wooden canteens, and tomahawks. On January 23 the
leading company of this regiment under Captain Jonathan Jones
had begun at Philadelphia its long march of six hundred miles
in the dead of winter. Hastening forward on foot, or on sleds,
where the patriotism of the country through which they passed
would furnish them, they crossed the Delaware on the ice, took
the eastern route, and reached Albany in eleven days. Thence
up the Hudson, and across country, they made their way to Fort
George, and on the ice of the lake, again, to Ticonderoga. There
were no roads on either side of Lake Champlain. They left the
last of their sleds at Ticonderoga, and made the rest of the
journey with their provisions on their backs, over snow and ice,
up Lake Champlain and the Sorel River to St. John's. Though their
provisions did not fail them, the country was almost as wild
and desolate as that of the Upper Kennebec, and their sufferings
from exposure were hardly less than those of Arnold's men. Their
arms, accoutrements, and dress when they arrived at La Prairie,
eighteen miles from St. John's, could not have been in much worse
condition. They arrived at Montreal frost-bitten, footsore and
exhausted, with spirits hardly less depressed than those of the
veterans to whose assistance they had come. After a fortnight's
rest at Montreal, they pushed on to join Arnold.

From this time reinforcements constantly made
their appearance from New England, New York, New Jersey, and
even further south. But they came in small bodies, and so complete
was the wreck of Montgomery's and Arnold's army that for some
time the fresh arrivals only closed up the gaps made by the smallpox
and the hardships to which the veterans of the campaign had been
exposed.

On March 14 another flag of truce was sent
to the city, but it was met as all the others had been. "No
flag will be received," said the guard, "unless it
comes to implore the mercy of the King." The next day the
garrison planted on the walls near St. John's gate a great wooden
horse, with a bundle of hay before it, and the inscription, "When
this horse has eaten this bunch of hay we will surrender."
Further to emphasize their vigilance and their defiance of the
besiegers, the British erected on Cape Diamond a post thirty
feet high with a kind of sentry, or lookout, box thereon, from
which the officers, with their glasses, could see St. Foy church
and the stretch of road leading to the city, and even the Holland
House and bodies of troops moving in its vicinity. But the plains
beyond Gallows Hill were still hidden from view. There, even
in daylight, the Americans might conceal a great number of men.
Therefore the British, though aware that reinforcements were
strengthening the provincials, could form no accurate estimate
of the number of fresh troops that had arrived.

On the 17th of March the Irishmen in the American
army, who were pretty numerous, saw to it that St. Patrick's
day did not pass unhonored. Not even cold and hunger could dampen
their boisterous spirits, and they set out to march about the
country, carrying muskets and sabers, each with a sprig of fir
in his cap, the officers wearing cockades in addition. A drum
and fife corps led the march, and for a flag a ragged silk handkerchief
was tied to the top of a fir tree above two crossed bayonets.
They marched to the nunnery at Three Rivers, which they serenaded
and cheered; then they returned to camp, pausing before the houses
of royalist adherents to swear and be sworn at, and before the
houses of well-disposed Canadians to raise a lusty cheer. The
procession ended at the residence of one M. Laframboise, who
either from sympathy with the cause or from motives of policy,
caused two demijohns of rum to be given to the rank and file,
while he regaled the officers on more expensive liquors.

On March 25, information was received that
Canadian loyalists to the number of some three hundred and fifty
were assembling under the leadership of Monsieur Beaujeu, a former
captain in the Canadian militia, in the parishes to the south
of Quebec, intending to throw themselves into the city for its
relief by crossing the St. Lawrence from the southern shore near
Point Levi. Measures were at once taken to offer check to this
move. A scouting party of fifty men advanced by Beaujeu to feel
the way for his main body and led by Sieur Coullard and a Mr.
Bailly, a priest, having advanced as far as the parish of St.
Pierre, were surrounded in a house by a large party of rebel
Canadians, with one hundred and fifty Americans, under Major
Dubois, who had been detached from the camp at Quebec. The royalists,
in spite of the disparity of their numbers, showed fight, but
after two of their party had been killed and ten wounded, surrendered.
In this affair it is said that fathers fought against sons and
sons against fathers, and so bitter was the feeling of the Canadians
that, but for the interference of the Americans, the prisoners
would have been massacred even after the surrender. The effect
of the reverse was such that Captain Beaujeu was obliged to disband
his levies and go into hiding to escape capture.

During the closing days of the month, a number
of cannon, some as large as twenty-four pounders, and a plentiful
supply of ammunition arrived from General Wooster, whom Montgomery
had left in command at Montreal. Close behind this welcome offering
came the General himself. He had left Montreal in charge of one
Moses Hazen, a renegade officer of his Majesty's service, who
had been given a commission in the Continental army, and as Arnold's
superior officer at once assumed direction of the army and its
operations. It was the 1st day of April when he reached the camp,
and on that very night the signals, which by arrangement, as
the reader will remember, the prisoners in the Dauphin jail were
to display if their plan succeeded, were seen to blaze up behind
the ramparts of the Upper Town.

Arnold, now able to ride his horse, wished
to advance at once to their support, but Wooster refused his
assent, either from the cautious temper which became his age,
or because he suspected some trap. Fortune, for once, had favored
the Americans by the opportune arrival and decision of Wooster,
for Governor Carleton, informed by the deserter Hall of the prearranged
signals, had been wily enough to organize a sham combat, to build
bonfires to imitate the signal of burning buildings, and even
to counterfeit the success of the prisoners by lusty cheers at
St. John's gate, while his troops were massed to receive the
unsuspecting rebels, and his cannon, loaded with grape and canister,
were trained on the ground over which they must approach. To
Wooster's caution alone was owing the failure of this grim April
fool's day joke.

A few days later Arnold, his leg again crippled
by a fall from his horse, and hurt because General Wooster did
not show him what he thought proper consideration, asked to be
relieved, and retired on the 12th of April to Montreal, to convalesce.
He wrote home in explanation of this action, "Had I been
able to take any active part, I should, by no means, have left
camp, but as General Wooster did not think proper to consult
me, I am convinced I shall be more useful here than in camp,
and he very readily granted me leave of absence."

This was the ineffectual end of all Arnold's
gallant hopes and patriotic endeavors for the reduction of the
fortress of Quebec and the conquest of Canada. He took no further
part in the siege of the city, and was forced in inactivity to
see the enterprise for which he and his brave comrades had sacrificed
and suffered so much, crumble day by day into more hopeless disaster.
He reached Montreal, however, in time to welcome the arrival
of a committee appointed by Congress to engage in friendly intercession
and conciliation with those Canadians who still held allegiance
to the King and considered the colonial troops enemies and invaders.
Benjamin Franklin, Samuel Chase and Charles Carroll of Carrollton
composed the committee, which was accompanied by the Most Reverend
John Carroll, Archbishop of Baltimore, who was expected to add
weight to its appeal to the French Roman Catholics.

The task of receiving these distinguished
men in a manner calculated to flatter them and impress the Canadian
public was one which Arnold doubtless found quite to his taste.
The committee were at once conducted to his headquarters, the
imposing mansion of the Canadian rebel, Thomas Walker, where
they were received, as Carroll tells us, in a most polite and
friendly manner by the General and "a genteel company of
ladies and gentlemen who had assembled" there.

But the envoys arrived too late to be of any
real service to the cause they represented. The lines were already
strictly drawn, and as spring approached the inevitable collapse
of the siege of Quebec began to be foreseen by rebel sympathizers
as well as by loyalists and those shrewd trimmers who were prepared
to follow either flag to victory. Franklin, who was past seventy
years of age, suffered so much from exposure on the journey that
after ten days spent at Montreal he was obliged to return. The
others made a longer stay, but had no substantial results to
show for their labors.

Meanwhile the troops before Quebec, now increased
to about two thousand effectives, with several hundred men still
on the sick list, began with the advent of spring to make some
efforts to throw off the inertia which defeat, sickness and cold
had bred within them. They even became once more aggressive.
During the month of April, although obliged to work on snow-shoes
part of the time, for even as late as the 3d of May snow covered
the ground - they erected and opened a battery of three twelve-pounders
and one eight-inch howitzer at Point Levi, and another on a slight
elevation known as "Les Buttes à Neveu," on
the Heights of Abraham opposite St. Louis gate, within four hundred
yards of the walls. This battery mounted one twenty-four pounder,
four twelve-pounders, two six-pounders and two howitzers. A third
battery of two guns, called "Smith's," on a point of
land near the mouth of the St. Charles, upon the opposite bank
to the city, had been playing intermittently and abortively since
the 22d of January. Still, even the heavier ordnance they now
possessed made no impression on the massive walls of the city
- their red-hot shots did no perceptible damage - and at length
the continuous and accurate fire of the garrison compelled them
to dismantle their batteries and drag off their guns. They had
hit and injured some of the shipping, and wounded some of those
on board, but doubtless did not then know that they had done
so.

St. Louis Gate, showing
the Old Wall

The utter failure of the artillery to produce
any results whatever, was a source of deep discouragement to
the Americans. The project of another assault upon the fortifications
of the town seems never to have been seriously entertained, but
no little reliance had been placed upon the ability of the heavier
ordnance supplied by General Wooster to batter a breach in the
defenses, and subject the city to all the terrors of an active
bombardment. Disappointed in this expectation, the enthusiasm
of the men flagged once more, and only the promise of fresh reinforcements
kept hope alive and justified the stubborn prolongation of the
siege.

These reinforcements were looked for from
various quarters. Washington had brought the investment of Boston
to a victorious issue on the 17th of March, and a part of his
army was therefore available for service in Canada. The regiments
of Colonels Patterson, Bond, Graham, and Poor were immediately
ordered to Quebec, by way of the Hudson River and Lake Champlain.
All told, these regiments numbered only about eleven hundred
men. A considerable force had also been collected at Fort George
under General Schuyler, who had recovered from his illness of
the previous year, and waited only for the lakes to be clear
of ice in order to commence the march to Quebec. This detachment
included six companies of Connecticut troops, two companies of
the 1st Pennsylvania regiment, three companies of New Jersey
troops, and two companies of Van Schaick's from New York. There
were two more companies of New Jersey troops about thirty-five
miles below Crown Point, on their way to Canada. The rest of
the New Jersey regiment had crossed the boundary. Five companies
of the 2d Pennsylvania regiment were at Fort Edward, waiting
for the lake to open, and two companies of the 1st Pennsylvania
were on their way from New York.

It was evident that Quebec was a prize for
which the large fleet of reinforcements already despatched from
England, and the new army of the Americans were to race. Unfortunately
for the latter, it was now the worst possible season of the year
for its purposes. The lakes and rivers were not yet open for
navigation, while the ice, which still covered them, had grown
too thin and rotten to bear the weight of an army in safety.
On land the roads were rendered impassable by the slush and mud
which are the inevitable accompaniments of a waning northern
winter. Not only days, but weeks, were thus wasted in tedious
and exasperating delays, until it became almost a certainty that
the St. Lawrence would offer a clear road to the English ships,
long before Schuyler could possibly appear before Quebec.

On the 1st of May, General John Thomas, the
"hero of Dorchester Heights," who had been dispatched
to relieve Wooster, arrived in camp. Congress had appointed General
Charles Lee to this duty earlier in the season, but that erratic
and untrustworthy officer - a traitor at heart, as recent discoveries
have proved - had delayed his departure on the plea of ill health,
so long that in the end he was transferred to the Southern Department,
and the command assigned to a more honorable and patriotic soldier.
When Thomas arrived before Quebec, he found the Continental army
shrunken to about nineteen hundred men, of whom not much more
than one thousand were fit for duty; furthermore nearly one-third
of that number were preparing to depart, as their enlistment
had expired on the 15th day of April. There were only one hundred
and fifty pounds of powder and six days' rations in the encampment,
no intrenching tools and no competent engineers. The Canadians
would no longer accept the paper money of Congress; their priests
refused to confess those who joined the rebel ranks, and although
the Yankees tried to checkmate them by hiring one Lotbiniere,
a priest, for fifteen hundred livres per annum, and the promise
to make him a bishop as soon as Quebec was taken, to confess
all who applied to him, the refusal of priestly sanction and
comfort continued a powerful factor in the struggle. Owing to
the more apparent prospect of British success, the Canadians
had experienced plainly a change of heart, while the indifferent
success of their plans and hopes bred in the Americans a bitterness
which made them less careful to preserve their attitude of friendship
and conciliation. Spring was rapidly ripening the seeds of discontent
and impatience which the occupation of the country by the Americans
had gradually sown during the winter. A general rising of the
Canadians might be expected, should the anticipated reinforcements
from England arrive.